Our goals for the season are out the window – Dawson

WORTHING Raiders Rugby Club head coach Kieron Dawson admits his side’s goals for this season are out of the window after Saturday’s 28-24 defeat at home to Dings Crusaders.

The defeat leaves Raiders sixth in National 2 South, 19 points behind second-placed Dorking, who are in the play-off position, and 24 points adrift of leaders Henley Hawks.

Dawson said: “It’s time to start thinking about next season now as our goals are out of the window for this season.

“I’ll sit down with the powers-that-be and see what they want to do.

“Maybe it will be a case of looking at some of our younger players for the rest of the season and building for the following season.

“Our goals are behind us now. We knew this would be a big weekend, with Dorking at Redruth and it did surprise me how easily they won.

“But it shows how confident they are and they’re on a roll at the moment. They are winning games by a few points and we’re losing them.

“We’ll aim for the top three or four now and see what happens.

“We could hope for a catastrophic loss of form for Dorking but we’ve got to be realistic, re-assess and see where we want to go.”

Raiders have not been helped by a lengthy injury list this season, while star performers from last season, Ollie Richards and Kiba Richards, moved to Esher and Rosslyn Park respectively, and Joe Govett is at university so has not played a game.

Dawson said: “We’ve been without Ollie, Kiba and Joe this season, Matt Miles hasn’t played much, Scott Barlow has played just once, Pete Cleveland hasn’t played at all and we lost Jack Metters to injury early in the season.

“Scott, Joe and Pete were our players of the seasons for the last three years and we’ve been without all of them.

“Alex Nielsen is also not available every week so, all of a sudden, we’ve been without a lot of strike power from last season.

“However, we’re still creating opportunities in games but we just haven’t had the skill to execute.”

On Saturday’s defeat, Dawson said: “It was a bit of a shocker. We were ten to 15 per cent off our game and I think they wanted it a bit more.”